The Linguistics of Spoken Communication in Early Modern English Writing by Imogen Marcus

Author:Imogen Marcus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

     your faythefoull

      assuryed frend

     E Shrouesbury

29 I came hether of crestolmes euen

30 and lefte my letyll arbell at

31 Chattysworth I thanke god she

32 yndewred uary well w[i]t[h] trauell

33 and yt I was forsed to take longe

34 Iornes to be here w[i]t[h] my lorde afore

35 this day

In ID 123, new sentences are often signalled by one of the four discourse connectives studied. These are either used on their own (see for example sentence-initial AND on line 18) or with a punctus that signals the end of the previous sentence, (see for example lines 7 and 23). However, they are never capitalized. Several of the sentence boundaries in this letter are left unmarked (see for example lines 3 and 20). It is tentatively suggested here that this letter takes the form of a narrative above the level of the sentence. Furthermore, that the four inter-related parts that make up the ideational structure of conversational narratives, namely the initiation of the narrative, the reporting of events within the narrative, the conveying of the point of the narrative and the accomplishment of an action through the narrative, are also present.

This particular narrative is directed at Sir Francis Walsingham and concerns Mary Queen of Scots, who was in the custody of Bess and her fourth husband Shrewsbury from 1568 to 1584. The letter opens with a relatively extended opening address and salutation in which Bess emphasises her loyalty and subservience to the Queen (see lines 1–11). It could be argued that this section also constitutes the initiation of the narrative to follow. It certainly prepares the reader for the narrative that follows. The transition from the end of this opening section of the letter to the reporting of events within the narrative, which takes up lines 12–23, is marked with a sole punctus. No other discourse-marking device is used. The transition from the report of events within the narrative to the conveying of the point of the narrative, (see lines 23–26) is left unmarked. Incidentally, the point of the narrative is to show Walsingham that although Mary claims to be very unwell, Bess sees ‘no danger yn har of lyffe’ (line 23). In other words, Bess thinks Mary is in adequate health and that her excuses should be treated with scepticism. This last section could also be said to accomplish an action through the narrative, in the sense that it advises Walsingham to be sceptical about the truth of what Mary writes to him.

It is apparent that while new sentences are either signalled by the four connectives studied or left unmarked in ID 123, higher level functional transitions in the narrative are signalled either by punctuation or are left unmarked. ID 123 therefore arguably contains the alternation patterning found in PDE speech , which was discussed in the ‘Methodology’ section of the chapter. To remind the reader, Schiffrin suggests that in spoken conversation, the discourse connective AND often alternates with what she calls ‘zero’ (i.e. unmarked discourse boundaries) to produce syntagmatic contrasts which ‘organize both the referential and functional elements of an idea structure, at both local and global levels’ (1987: 153).

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